Ed Killer: Shark Week is coming to TV, but it's been here all year

<p>Katharine, the great white shark, gets feisty as the crew of OCEARCH prepares to lower the lift and release her back into the sea after capturing and tagging her with a satellite tag in August 2013 near Cape Cod, Mass. OCEARCH captain Brett McBride watches to see how Katharine reacts.</p>

But the beauty of living along the Treasure Coast is we can almost choose to interact with sharks pretty much 365 days a year.

Here we don’t have Shark Week, we have Shark Life.

Just this year, watermen and women have been able to follow these fascinating story lines much the same way a bull shark can follow the scent of a chum slick from miles away.

KATHARINE AND FRIENDS

I used to tell people we didn’t have great white sharks anywhere near the Treasure Coast.

I honestly thought they stayed in cold water. Wow, have I learned a lot in recent years.

First, there were the occasional sightings by deep water spearfishermen that have only been confirmed since the advent of the GoPro camera and YouTube. Then, came the encounters near the surface by divers. Finally, there was Katharine.

Katharine measures 14 feet, weighs more than one ton and carries with her a satellite tag that has made her into a celebrity.

Her phenomenon was made possible last year when OCEARCH (follow at Ocearch.org) began an effort to place satellite tags on a few great whites in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean.

Katharine was tagged a year ago in Cape Cod, swam by us in May and again a few weeks ago on her way to and from a June vacation in the Gulf of Mexico.

I’ve had fun following Katharine. And she has developed quite a following on social media — she has her own Twitter account (@Shark_Katharine).

But adding to the thrill of being able to follow her movement online were more local sightings of her cousins. A week ago — mere days before the start of lobster mini-season — Darlene Parnass sent me a report of a great white encounter off Bethel Shoal.

That made the fifth observation of a great white off the Treasure Coast this year.

BULLS ON PARADE

There is a well-known fishing spot just a couple miles offshore of the St. Lucie Inlet.

I always love to pose the question of it’s name to out-of-towners here to enjoy a day of fishing. I’ll say to them, “Why do you think they call that place Bull Shark Barge?”

It’s a no-brainer — there is a barge and there are bull sharks there.

But bull sharks are all over the Treasure Coast this year. Anglers reported bull sharks have been intruding on their fishing, taking permit, cobia, snapper, grouper and snook.

Two baby bull sharks in one week were observed dead in the St. Lucie River.

Bad water? Lack of food? Fishing bycatch? We’ll never know.

‘SHARKNADO 2, THE SECOND ONE’

Sharks, storms, Matt Lauer, Al Roker, chain saws. ’Nuff said.

WHALE OF A TALE

In June, at least two groups of boaters I saw on Facebook encountered a whale shark in about 20 feet of water of Stuart Beach.

One family, thrilled with the sight, captured cellphone video of it and shared it with friends and media including us at TCPalm.com.

In the video, several dark shapes are clearly visible swimming beneath the whale shark — cobia, a prized game and food fish.

Sure enough, the second group of boaters — also enamored with the plankton-eating whale shark — tossed jigs to the cobia and caught two of them.

FALL MIGRATION

One of coastal Florida’s largest migrations of finfish will begin in a few weeks — The Fall Mullet Run.

When it begins, every predator in waters from the Indian River Lagoon out to sea will take part in the southward moving feeding frenzy, including blacktips sharks and more.

Keep an eye out for the action and if surfing remember, if you are in the bait run, you are part of the buffet.

Ed Killer is an outdoors columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. This column reflects his opinion. Contact him at 772-221-4201, ed.killer@scripps.com, or follow him at @tcpalmekiller on Twitter.

About Ed Killer

Ed Killer is the outdoors columnist and a member of the Indian River Lagoon coverage team at Treasure Coast Newspapers and TCPalm.com. He is a Treasure Coast native and has covered fishing and boating in this community since 1994.